Wini won a basket in a school raffle this past Friday. First of all, this was a fundraiser called "Pasta Night." I decided to support the fundraiser by helping with the ticket sales before the night and cleanup afterwards instead of actually eating pasta. Nick and Wini went to the actual dinner without me, and I caught up with them after dinner when everyone was waiting for the raffle draw.

It's so tough on the kindergarteners because they put in their tickets, but they don't quite grasp that if 250 kids put in a ticket to win a box of 5000 stickers (I'm not joking) that it's not likely they will win it. Both Wini and her little best friend Emma had long faces as the night went on, and the baskets were running out.

Then Wini's name was pulled - she was ecstatic! She ran up, and Emma, who had been sitting next to her, burst into tears. It's one of those life lessons, but you hate to see it.

And I wish they hadn't pulled her name, because it was a confusing hodgepodge of knickknacks like someone had cleaned out their garage. I know that the basket our room contributed had tickets to a day spa, some restaurants, a foot massager, all this cool stuff. It was worth $480. The basket we won had a buddha statue, candles, a stick of incense, some "crystal" roses (one of which was broken and had been taped back together, so whoever made the basket knew it was broken), coupons for $1 off at Quiznos, some orange juice coupons, some party novelty crap that you find in kids' goodie bags, and a whole bunch of fake pearl clip on earrings. What the hey? Oh, and this was the kicker for the diabetic on a diet: an entire case of butter cookies. Not a box, not 5 boxes, but 12, 2-lb. boxes of cookies. That's just peachy, isn't it?

There were also supposed to be a few items worth some money, like a $50 OSH certificate and some Visa gift cards. Suspiciously, they weren't in the basket. I called the woman in charge of the event and she investigated: apparently the mom who had assembled the basket "forgot" to put them in. Really, you have to wonder what this world is coming to. Did she think whoever won the basket would not want the only prizes in there worth something? The event was last Friday, and the certificates have yet to appear. Hmmm.

Other random stuff in the basket: a $500 coupon toward a weekly rental at this place: "Howden Castle." Sounds great, until you find out that it's $2000 a week to rent. Okay, so you get a bunch of friends together and go in on it, right? It only has 3 bedrooms, and sleeps 8. So basically if (say) the Lafferties joined us, that would fill it to capacity, and it would cost us $750. Now if it were in Scotland, or at the beach, or near a ski area, I would be thrilled -- but it's in the Santa Cruz mountains about 45 minutes away, right on the highway. So I don't think I'll be using it anytime soon.

So...the plot thickens. Wini was talking about the raffle after school, and she put a lot of emphasis on how it was so cool that her friend Clare drew her name out of the bowl. Drew her name. Not her ticket. I asked her if she thought Clare read her name on the ticket, and she just shrugged and said, "I don't know."

Here's how they did the drawings: people had put their tickets into an 8.5x11" envelope that was taped onto the basket they were bidding on. A PTA member emptied the envelope into a large bowl, and handed it to the principal. The principal held the bowl at waist height and had a kid draw a ticket out from the bowl. It was not above the kids' heads, they were standing, so it was about chest level for the kid pulling the ticket. It would have been simple for Wini's friend to see her name and grab her ticket. Apparently, last year's winners were mostly people running the event, and after complaints, they changed it from another PTA member drawing the ticket to letting kids draw the ticket. All in all there were about 50 prizes given away, from the big baskets to individual prizes like gift certificates at restaurants.

So, maybe that's all part of the process, right? Some kids might look, but it wasn't like they were digging around in there for a long time looking for a particular ticket. But the weird thing was that there were definitely people who won repeatedly. And there were a couple of cases where the kid pulling the ticket pulled his own name or his family's name. Then we come to find out that a mom who won a couple of big prizes is saying that she crumples or folds her tickets - the same person whose son drew her name for a big prize. It puts a whole new spin on everything.

Well, it was an unexpected windfall. The raffle ticket was for a good cause, and Wini loves the actual physical basket. That's something, I guess!